What you’re talking about sounds to me like “conciousness raising”. Now, some people have told me conciousness raising is condescending, and anarchists should abandon it because it reeks of authoritarian communism. To me, that sounds like bullshit. Of course, certain approaches could be authoritarian and condescending, but I believe there are ways to go about it that are not. Maoists handing out newspapers and getting into vitriolic arguments is different than inviting people into an infoshop or approaching them in conversation. Conciousness raising can be an imposition, or a sharing process—hopefully the latter. But all ways of thinking are not “equal”; some people have oppressive ideas instilled in them, and other ways of thinking are more conducive to happiness and freedom, and of course a lot is culturally relative.

So essentially, I think a seriously misguided opinion has grown among certain anarchists that conciousness raising is undesireable. Without it, how would an anarchist movement grow powerful? If certain anarchists believe that people are just going to suddenly rise up, they’re starting to sound a bit too much like Marx in his faith that the proletariat was destined to spontaneously rebel.

In more direct relation to your question: I think the answer has a lot to do with time. I don’t know if you were one of the first people to expose your sister to feminist (by that name or not) ideas—but you say she more or less understands them now. I’m not familiar with your family history, but I would guess that you probably influenced your sister in that respect. And now, she is probably just beginning to think about issues of colonialism and racism, at your urging. Given a lifetime and a whole cultural history of learning to accept those dynamics, it would be unlikely for her to suddenly realize their oppressive nature. People rarely change their minds on a subject during the course of a conversation—it’s when they think about it afterwards that the ideas exchanged start to have an effect.

When I was in Oventik, we talked with some of the women who ran one of the textile co-ops there. Twenty years ago, women in Chiapas were seen as hardly better than cattle (And animal liberation is not even on the map in indigenous communities there). Now they’re running a coopertative business on there own, and the “Women’s Revolutionary Law” is supposed to guarantee woman’s right to self determination. Yet most women there are still the ones who usually take care of the children, and the nature of the co-op—weaving—is still “women’s work”. Talking to some of the women there, they don’t all see those things as problems. Others want their men to learn how to weave and to take care of the children.

This conciousness doesn’t develop in a vacuum—there is concerted effort by more ‘developed’ groups to encourage others to assert their right to equality and self-determination. I was in Oventik for the International Women’s Day, where the community was transformed into a festival with sports, music, vendors and hundreds of families camping in the field next to the secondary school. The sports tournements (basketball, volleyball, soccer) were reserved female-only teams. I watched from the sidelines with the men and the women who weren’t playing. Most of the women’s teams were not nearly as practiced as the men who would play almost every day—and this led to quite number of fumbles and mistakes. Often, groups of men would chuckle when a pass went awry or someone missed an easy shot.

Just because the Women’s Revolutionary Law exists does not mean sexism disappears. It is part of a long term process which includes classes, meetings, projects, festivals,and all sorts of other activities aimed at fostering people’s conciousness. Societal change is a generational process. Similarly, a couple of conversations with your sister probably won’t change her views. I’d guess that the next time someone calls her “exotic” she’ll think back to her conversations with you, and maybe begin to question the term internally—which is precisely the process that we should encourage people to start through conciousness raising.

On this subject, I would strongly recommend reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. It’s not perfect—some of the propositions are indeed somewhat authoritarian—but there are some really important ideas about conciousness raising in it. I think B has a copy.

“Okay. Everyone’s obsessing over these French books, The Call and The Coming Insurrection. It’s annoying, though, because it’s like they’ve forgotten all the feminism and anti-racism we’ve pounded into their heads over the past five or whatever years.”

-anonymous, thus far

So, yeah. The social clash. I never totally forgot about movement building, thats allways there. But, man… the social clash, the social war, broken windows, spies, too many arrests to count, a! anti! Titilation. Since I’ve moved back here, ive dreamed about too many broken windows to count, too many abandoned buildings, too many street parties, too much atmosphere. Too much pining for the atmospere of struggle,

But people ARE struggling, to eat, to take care of their kids, to maintain housing, work. And it is Autonomy not social war which will help them. The ungovernability of bodies may strike during The Riot and charge the atmosphere, but it is not all, we are not only ungovernable, we are to be autonomous. And I’m sorry but autonomy doesn’t mean I can’t tell you I think you’re dumb for throwing down that circle-a in spray paint. Too many double negations? Whatever.

Working with the childcare collective, I get the same feeling I got working with Gateways (popular education program, bringing together college kids, incarcerated folks, and formerly incarcerated folks, with some overlap. It is a sense of creation, and collaboration. Reclaiming the work I do in other spaces (college for gateways, childcare for childcare) helps me to re-enter those spaces having excericised creative control over my autonomy work, and reengage with some new confidence and new doubts.

Ive been thinking about creating autonomy, creating a new world. Finding ways to meet each others needs in the present and future, so that we can build more space for revolutionary social movements in the present and future. Not only in  an anti-oppression framework, not only as a way to withdraw, but as a way to more effectively engage, to build community instead of scenes.

A community takes care of one another, a scene is an assortment of individuals and circles of friends that end up in the same spaces often. The scene will not feed you, the scene will not give you childcare. The scene give a fuck about you as long as you make the scene more exciting. The community gives a fuck about you.

cross-posted from flâneries:

how do people get radicalized?

i’ve been thinking about this question for the past few months, but since i came home i’ve been particularly caught up with it. in new york i’m lucky enough to be able to surround myself with folks who have generally rad politics, and while there are so so so many fucked up things happening, it’s still an entirely different community than the one i had/have in texas. my friends from home, my parents, my younger sister - they are in entirely different places politically than my friends & community in new york.

for starters, i realized that i have to speak differently about my politics to folks here. in new york, when i have conversations about racism, about feminism, about the police, we already have a base of assumptions upon which the conversation is built: assumptions about the omnipresence of the patriarchy, of white privilege, of the inherent violence & oppression in government. we already agree on these things, so we converse with the assumption that we realize the pervasiveness and the power of these structures in everyday life. but when i talk to folks from home, i’ve gotten into bitter arguments, or endless conversations that go nowhere - over things that we should, in theory, agree on.

for example, today i had a conversation with my younger sister (she’s 17) about how someone complimented her by telling her she looks “exotic.” she’s got fairly lefty politics (even by my standards) - she sorta disagrees with the idea of authority & the government, she strongly dislikes cops, she’s got rad ideas about feminism (even if she doesn’t like calling it that), and is starting to wrap her head around the idea of white privilege. but when we started talking about it, she asked me why it pisses me off when someone tells me i look “exotic” - they’re trying to give me a compliment, and anyway, don’t i want to be “different” and not “normal” or “typical” like a “boring McDonalds American girl” (these are, more or less, her words). i responded by saying that of course, i am proud of my heritage and don’t wish i could wake up white and blonde tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean i should be glad when people tell me i look exotic. i tried to engage with her about ideas like assumed whiteness, to talk about the inherent colonialism and racism that is at play when someone calls me/her “exotic”. as an anthro student, i reflexively cringe when i hear the word, and i tried to explain to her the idea of the “exoticized Other” and why she should reject that image, instead of feeling appreciative of it. i tried to get into the intersections of feminism and racism: how historically, women of color have been put in cages and on show for their “exotic beauty”; how as a brown woman i hate, and actively fight against, my own exoticization because it goes hand in hand with my objectification and with the (present and historical) exploitation of my heritage and my ancestors.

but it just didn’t get through. it was as if i was speaking in a language she didn’t understand; the ideas behind my words & my anger were lost on her. i know that if i could get these ideas across to her, she would agree with them - she would reject her own exoticization; just like, as she has begun to develop a feminist conciousness, she has begun to reject her own disempowerment & objectification in media images & movies, in the “chivalry” of her male friends. she gets the connection between the hundreds of movies about blushing young brides, the endless ads with women in thongs, the cultural acceptance of domestic abuse - and the second-class status of women in society. but somehow, she doesn’t get how calling a brown woman “exotic” is a part of the same problem (with a little racist twist thrown in). she responded to me by saying something like, “just because someone’s ancestors owned slaves or colonized & killed people doesn’t mean it’s their fault; they can’t help what their grandparents did, they didn’t choose to be white. and besides, i want to be different, i’m proud of being different.” she just didn’t get it.

and i’ve had similar (and uglier) results when trying to talk to my best friend (who is male) about male privilege & feminism, or a latina friend about white privilege. these people are good people, they agree with the basic idea of equality and believe that racism and sexism exists and is fucked up - but beyond that, i can’t get through. and while i want to just say that the problem is my failure to explain these concepts well, i know that’s not really the issue. though i’m sure that plays some part, i’ve realized that the real reason they don’t seem to get it is because we are speaking different languages: at least, to the extent that our words (which are just sounds that represent ideas) mean entirely different things to each other. i come from a place where i’ve read a lot of race/class/gender analysis, i’ve been studying socio- and anthropological thought, i’ve had long discussions and developed my radical politics over the past 2-3 years. they, on the other hand, come from entirely different places; i’m likely the first person to present these ideas to them, and they don’t have any contact with a radical community of any sort that realizes these ideas and actively puts resistance against them into practice.

this problem i’ve been having is one that we’ve all been having, and will continue to have, as a radical community - how do we talk to people, how can we radicalize otherwise well-meaning folks who just don’t get it? how do we, in essence, bridge the language gap? i know this is a question that doesn’t have a simple answer. i came from a similar place as my friends, but i was radicalized and came to the place where i am now. it was a long process - one that is not over, one that will never be over. but what i’m trying to figure out is, what starts that process? and how can we get that process to start in other people, if we are coming from such different understandings of the world?

emilydont:

I made the exceptionally bad decision of listening to the Brandon Darby radio interview at 4 or 5 last night, which, instead of making me sleepy, made me really fucking upset. For plenty of reasons, not least of all being that the interviewers kept billing this dude as an anarchic revolutionary, but he sounded like someone who identified more with some kind of “leftist” politics rather than someone who was serious about attempting revolutionary action. Besides being a total manarchist and someone who wasn’t committed to nonhierarchical organizing.

So much of what we do seems to be based around conviction, such that serious attempts at critiques of anarchist action can be exhausting, feel like reinventing the wheel. Easier to throw molotovs, right? To be dedicated to the ideas we share about oppression and coercion is difficult enough for folks also attempting to lead non-CrimethInc lives. Wanting to lead a life where no one has to wait on anybody hurts to the full-time waitress, besides feeling totally unreal. So being convinced even ideologically is hard; knowing that the ideology need not exist without corresponding attempts at action is even harder.

No wonder anarchists and other revolutionaries spend all their free time with each other, no wonder violence against property grows increasingly appealing tactically and cathartically. No wonder we get stuck on our dogmas—they are hard to believe but they are the only things that make sense. There is so much at stake in organizing against oppression. Darby felt that. I don’t understand how he got involved with anarchist organizing at all, after listening to that interview; I am still unconvinced of his revolutionary convictions at any point in time. I have to be! The idea of turning to the feds (actively, freely—dude talks about feeling the need to go to the feds after hearing some questionable rumblings from the RNC welcoming committee) is so disgusting and frightening to me, to my convictions. Would people I know do this? Would I?

Being in Greensboro and spending most of my time with people who aren’t anarchists reminds me how far-out anarchic convictions can be, especially when “anarchy” is commonly made synonymous with “chaos.” Re:radicalizing the non-revolutionary, I think the basic tenants of anarchism as I know it (whatever that means) can be appealing to anyone: that you are the only person who knows how to govern your life, that no one should have to exercise power over you. But between these ideals and a huge ideological and physical power structure to overthrow, most anarchists end up trying to build communities that try to resist hierarchy but which don’t, necessarily. Anarchy becomes a lifestyle (the only revolution we can achieve is in the way we live our lives, right?) that alienates as many people as it empowers, if not more, given the overwhelming white maleness/college educatedness/middle classness of most anarchist circles. Why would the non-revolutionary, even the one most consciously exploited by hierarchy—the dishwashers at my restaurant, the people of New Orleans—be moved to work within these circles, much less toward a revolution that seems as improbable as it does dangerous? In short, though anarchy moves me, I understand why it doesn’t move other folks. I also don’t think that the characteristics of many anarchist communities—veganism, polyamory, hairy women, etc.—which are offputting should be shirked to appeal to the masses. Does revolution involve convincing everyone of our interpretations of the right way to live? Or convincing them to find their own interpretations of the right way to live? I certainly err on the side of the relativistic, latter choice, but I sure as shit don’t know.

[i wrote this a long time ago and might add things to it, first of all; second, i don’t know how to post to -entropy, so someone reblog it for me?]

I’m going to be unusually forceful in saying that I think it’s a huge mistake to discount the value of espionage. I’m not just talking about infiltrating liberal groups we think could be manipulated to our ends, I’m talking about knowing our enemy. I want to know how the police operate on a detailed level. I want to know how real estate predators think. I want to know the everyday routines of neo-nazis. At the moment, I think the anarchist movement’s understanding of how our enemies operate is embarrassingly lacking, and one of the many reasons why anarchists are not yet (no longer?) a social force to be reckoned with.

Why would you enter into social conflict without trying to construct an idea of how you think your adversary will behave? Spying is essential for this. And yes, certain kinds of spying, surveillance especially, are boring. But being bored is a small price to pay when it leads to a successful action (you mention the short term value of intelligence information) or a completed campaign (because there is also long term value).

It is common knowledge that if you’re going to pull off an action, you scout the area and create a plan for various contingencies, taking as much into account as possible. I’ve read suggestions that one should think about which direction the police might come from. But why shouldn’t we take this a step further? Why not intercept radio communications? What if we had a disgruntled police employee who worked dispatch feed us information about shift-changes and coverage gaps? Of course, this is all hypothetical—I do not think such a source would be easy to find. However, we should rigorously pursue other similar openings in an effort to gain the upper hand in any engagement we find ourselves in.

As a side note, I would posit that the failure of the ‘sensitive information’ you mention had more to do with lax security discipline among people (as in not having trustworthy sources, not knowing how to filter through bad information, etc..) than any intrinsic shortcoming of spying as a technique. This would seem to support my original point—that would should practice using intelligence techniques instead of resigning ourselves to incompetence when something finally does fall into our lap.

This subject is closely related to my developing tendency to conceive of social struggle in militant, tactical terms. This is not necessarily in pursuit of an “urban guerrilla” approach, but rather a useful metaphor which I believe can encourage us to begin taking ourselves seriously. For too long has political work been seen as a game or a hobby, “something to do on the side”. When I hear people say, “This is war” in reference to social struggle, I want them to mean it. I think we can glean a lot from organized crime, the CIA (and other intelligence agencies the world over), and current and past guerrilla movements, and incorporate their techniques into an amorphous psuedo-militant revolutionary praxis that encompasses both “movement building” and insurrection.

cross-posted to beetx, in response to no majesty:

consensus/structure/power dynamics: i think you bring up really interesting points about the structures of large-scale organizations. however, common ground has had to deal with a number of individual specificities, especially that it had a mostly transient population. i feel like the impermeance made difficult a real contemplation of “identity politics” - i’ve also heard from a number of people that unchecked misogyny was rampant in the organization. this begs the question of how can we effectively challenge bullshit with folks who aren’t our BFFs - i still am unsure about how to address issues in this context (and with friends, but that is a different matter).

working in communities of the “other”: i think there is a clear need to “meet folks where they’re at” but without allowing them to engage in bullshit if we can help it. i’ve said before that had i not been sleeping while the meeting had taken place, i would have blocked the serving of flesh at the NYU occupation - in spite of the fact that no one had slept in ~36 hours and all were tired of eating pb&j’s on dumpstered bread. it’s really hard to say that we should allow oppression to continue unfettered, but there are a number of ways to make that happen that can be both off-putting and not.

counterintelligence operations: there are a number of folks i know who think that via infiltration of the non-radical political scene (non-profits, mainstream parties, etc.), they will be able to make gains useful to “the movement.” i think this is bullshit. the best outcome is being bored out of yr skulls; the worst, complete de-radicalization. the only sensitive information that can be gained will be momentarily helpful (i’m thinking of when a house i lived in heard of a potential raid through a “friend” - although it turned out to be wrong); the long-term information (e.g. tactics) can be gleaned through a variety of other methods. i don’t understand why anyone would ever endorse infiltration as a relevant/useful tactic.

legitimacy within anarchist circles: there is much to be said about the usefulness of culture to a movement. being “cool,” though, depends on a certain amount of “uncool.” if we are to maintain a facade of “cool”, then we we will perpetuate the theoretical existence of “uncool” - hot has no meaning without its relationship to cold or warm. earlier today, a couple folks were arguing about the following: a friend in a committed relationship consistently puts himself in positions that will likely land him in prison. he claimed that it’s because he will always put his politics before any relationship he might have. she found that it was a fucked up and offensive. i actually felt more like he was right - our communities are perpetually transient and because of this, it’s hard to believe that one person (or even a community of people) are worth deep contemplation vis a vis personal compromise of one’s politics.

…with some killer quotes.

“The movement has to be the thing that revives healthy social relationships”

The whole book is about process-focused political movement building.  Many of the spaces folks discuss began as kitchens, and the blurred social and biological needs met by food really explains what horizontal movements are all about.  They begin with a self-evident problem, but solve it only in ways that continually empower the folks working to fix it.  Making demands exists simultaneously with making friends and making love, and effective movement building requires attending to all.  This constitutes more than simply after-meeting cookouts, but meetings open to the discussion of social issues.  It’s easy to let the political get personal, but it’s harder to politicize the personal, and successfully attending to the overlapping social and political needs of organizing requires talking through nominally personal/social issues in a political way, in meetings, with attention to the overlapping roles interlocutors take.

“We need to change what it means to think”

This capitalism thing runs pretty deep.  Capital impacts how we think of ourselves as individuals and how we relate to others.  I think that’s why horizontal politics centers on workplace and neighborhood councils, which produce a new collective identity with significance that supercedes the individuals that supposedly comprise it. This addresses the broadest politics possible, right down to the egos at its center.

Time

Two thoughts, rehashed from other convos, I think.  First, effective movement building requires articulating the relationship between time and freedom.  It needs forms of participation that make freedom real now as well as in the future. Second, we need a vision for a better future that still leaves room for change and conflict - something both less and more than a utopia for which we strive. The whole chapter on ‘power’ was one of the most compelling and challenging discussion of what a better world would be, and how the institutions we build to create it matter.  Much of this chapter dealt with the pace and tempo of collective spaces.  More importantly, it showed how thinking about power matters, for its own sake.  Too often discussions of power leave unquestioned how it is constituted, and what we really want from it.  Here, people discussed how they want power to be expressed, which neccesarily changes how they organize.

The need for confusion-

Much of this book was folks working out their discomforts and doubts.  Not being afraid to think of movements as a work-in-progress allows for the neccesary self-criticisms to make shit really work, now and in the future.

I’ve used this phrase to describe my politics many times before.  Now I think I’ve figured out why it works for me.

I think non-sectarian politics is neccesary because I believe in the transformative power people have, and the reaction bound to respond to changes brought on by that power.

The basic tenant of a sectarian position is a confidence in the structure of opression/power, and a program meant to remedy it.  However, in the course of carrying out that program, oppressive forces will transform themselves in unpredictable ways.  The character of power is determined by the character of resistence to it, as much as a singular class seeking to empower itself by the creation of social structures.

Basically, I think resistence drives the nature of social struggle as much as oppression, perhaps moreso.  Any substantial effort to resist a particular form of power will immediately require re-analysis to cope with the changes it brought on.  Constant re-analysis and attention to the shifting nature of politics undermines the usefulness of a stable sectarian position, and requires the broadest embrace of forms of struggle possible.

e.s sent this out:

http://thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=381

I have noticed that group discussions on the  internet tend to get diluted and sidetracked very quickly. Without structure, they end up in strange corners of the conversation that may not be very useful or illuminating. So I am proposing the radio show as a focal subject which brings up a lot of points.

First, it goes without saying that Darby is disgusting human being. This said, pehaps we can discuss more illuminating issues:

Consensus/structure/power dynamics: Regarding Darby’s “running” the organization, and particularly the issue with the volunteer vegan kitchen. (Serving vegan food and working with churches also relate to my next point) How do we manage an at least semi-efficient organization of hundreds without disempowering people? I believe semi-large organizations (temporary or permanent), where not everybody loves each other, are sometimes necessary. We can strive to treat our political organizations like we do friendships, but that is an ideal situation—we will not always find ourselves in a small collective with good friends, and we will sometimes need to collaborate with strangers whom we may not know or even totally agree with.

Working in communities of the “other”: Darby notes his unease with pushing revolutionary politics on people in the neighborhood, how they supposedly don’t want revolution, don’t want vegan food, etc… Now, when Darby brings up these points I think he is rationalizing his deep lack of revolutionary conviction, but there is some truth to his argument. If people have children in the military and “love their country”, where do we enter with our beliefs? Is our job to radicalize people or to cater to their current beliefs and needs (and are these mutually exclusive)?  What does that process look like? And how can we avoid Darby’s fatalistic assumption that because people currently express some discomfort with revolutionary politics that they will never be radical?

Counterintelligence operations: From the police perspective, the N.O officer’s friendship with Darby was and incredibly successful tactical maneuver. The offier doesn’t reveal this in his interview, but I have no doubt that he was constantly concious of the strategic implications of his contact with Darby. It was never purely personal. My question is: could this have just as easily gone the other way, with Darby inserting himself into the law enforcement apparatus and gleaning useful information to further anarchist’s aims?

Legitimacy within Anarchist circles: I believe that Crowder and McKay’s vulnerabilities to a provocateur were due to shortcomings within the arnarchist movement at large. As younger, less experienced activists, McKay speaks of the desire to get “credentials”. I think their urgent need to gain legitimacy (to the extent that they put up with the total bullying of Darby) is due to many anarchists being anarchists for the sake of their personal identity. Being a “revolutionary” is certainly appealing, and it can be a way to find meaning in life in a culture that teaches us to define ourselves through a series of empty consumer identities. Unfortunately such motiviations are easily exploited by that same individualistic culture. People can deny it repeatedly—but much of anarchist motivation comes from the desire the prove oneself in a social scene, to “become an anarchist”, as if an act of machoness or bad judgement means one a commited revolutionary. I think a healthier revolutionary culture would emphasize collective commitment to each other for each other’s sake, rather than the willingness to martyr oneself for the sake of personal identity. This is a tricky dichotomy, but I believe it would be useful to tease out the nuances. Anyone want to help?

An alternative to consensus process, to me, would be a whole hell of a lot closer to the way we make decisions in ‘everyday life’. For example, when hanging out with a group of friends, and youre trying to go somewhere to eat, would you chose a facilitator, take stack, give thumbs up/down (okay, maybe twinkle fingers, im looking at you beet)? Unless youre really fucking intense, probably not, youre probably not the most fun person to hang out with either.

So how do these decisions get made? We should be no less empowered to point out fucked up, dominating actions when making a regular decision with friends than when we are in a meeting. For the most part, it seems, that when hanging out with friends we tend to love and trust one another. This is foundational, one might be willing to give a little bit in the process if there is love and trust and if there is a profound human relationship on the line, we also might be more direct about our feelings.

This, again, is foundational. If we approach communities in resistance more basicly as loving communities, we could probably get to the punch a lot quicker, maybe more dramaticly than in a bureaucratized consensus process. If we love and trust our friends and allies, we are likelier to both tolerate behavior we find objectionable, trusting their capabilities to make decisions for themselves, but might also be more direct about what we find objectionable, making an investment over time to building a more solidly alligned community. Out of these communities come cultures of resistance, defined by the community over time and partially determining the set of responses availiable to more political problems.

(These communities while defined spacially by neoliberal capitalism’s influence on how much we move and to where and why do not have to, in the age of easy communication, be limited spacially. One can carry networks across time and space, letting them accrue more diverse individuals and activities. One can use networks to aid in local embeddedness. All of this can help determine the context of communities decision making, spreading and changing ideology, as with propaganda. Propaganda, as we all know, sets the stage for ideology, setting the stage for what is consensed to, process or not.)

End of the day, maybe we should focus more on building communities that contain as many types of people as possible, remembering that all consent or dissent does not happen at meetings, or within process.

pc